Posted
by
msmash
on Wednesday January 31, 2018 @12:02PM
from the big-ruling dept.

Mark Wilson writes: Judges have ruled that the UK government's digital surveillance program -- known variously as the Snooper's Charter and the Investigatory Powers Act -- is illegal.

In the case brought by human rights group Liberty, appeal judges found that the preceding Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2014 (DRIPA) -- which ultimately became the Snooper's Charter -- failed to offer adequate protection to people's data. Of particular concern was the fact that private data could be shared between different agencies without sufficient oversight. Further reading: The Intercept.

Being democratically elected is only part of the story. Writing laws which are legal is the other part.

For the same reason that any healthy democracy should have underpinnings which say "no, you don't get to decide these people are slaves", the judiciary is there to prevent people from passing laws which say exactly that.

If you live in a country where judges can't strike down laws as illegal, then you are in a seriously fucked country where lawmakers have absolute power and can pass any stupid ass law they want... all MPs get to fuck your daughter and your wife whenever they wish, for instance.

So, hey, if you are stupid enough to think you want to live in a country where judges can't void laws... then please, fuck off and go live in one. I guarantee you, it won't be a nice place.

Know who wants to live in a country where the judiciary can't strike down laws? Tyrants, fascists, and mewling idiots who are too stupid to understand the function of a judicial system in society.

If you want to live in such a country, move to one, and then shut the fuck up.

Judges in the UK can't strike down statutes. The legal system here is not like the US, where the law can evolve directly through the courts as well as through legislation. Our courts are strictly there to interpret existing laws and to deal with conflicts.

In this case, the point is that two laws were incompatible. On the one hand, we have the surveillance law, introduced by our national government. On the other hand, we have the EU human rights laws. The court here took the view that the former were in conflict with the latter, and the latter won.

The same could potentially have happened in a post-Brexit world where those EU laws are no longer supreme, if the equivalent safeguards are transferred into our national law as part of the Brexit process. This is something that various MPs and campaign groups are promoting heavily right now, because they are sceptical about the government's preferred plan where ministers get to transfer laws but also make some adjustments to them, ostensibly for practical reasons, but without necessarily passing primary legislation in Parliament. The loss of EU-derived safeguards for human rights, employee protections and the like is the main reason for concern here.

Of course, assuming we do leave the EU and our national law is then all we have to work with, that does mean that the elected legislature can amend those laws however they want and judges then have to rule based on the new laws. This is by design, and is part of what's called parliamentary sovereignty -- the principle that Parliament is supreme among all parts of the government and can't be overruled by the government alone, activist judges or (more historically now) other potential influences such as royalty or aristocrats.

The potential downside of this is that, yes, they can make bad laws too. The upside is that if MPs do that, there will no longer be anywhere for them to hide. If they want to pass a law that says they can do something bad to ordinary people, they're going to have to do it in public through the mechanisms of Parliament and they're going to be accountable for it at the next general election.

That's a bunch of hogwash where you conflate the differences in standard hyperbole chosen by politicians in the two places for actual differences. And your hyperbole is just from one political "side," too, so it is crap in multiple dimensions.

I honestly have no idea what you're talking about. If you're interested in a sensible discussion and not just trolling and/or reading your personal political views into someone else's post when they aren't there, feel free to clarify.

Judges in the UK can't strike down statutes. The legal system here is not like the US, where the law can evolve directly through the courts as well as through legislation. Our courts are strictly there to interpret existing laws and to deal with conflicts.

I see some pedantry, but where is the distinction or the difference? Courts here rule that XYZ state statute is overruled by ABC federal law, or that federal law conflicts with the Constitution all the time.

The following are related but distinct: two statute laws are in conflict and a court must decide how to balance them, a statute law conflicts with a higher law (such as a written constitution) and automatically loses, and the effect of a statute law is changed over time by case law.

It's a question of how much a precedent is worth. In some legal systems, as I understand it, case law can eventually become strong enough to override the statutes from which it originated, thus allowing the law as a whole to evol

Most Brexit voters are senile, too scared to leave their homes due to rampant paranoia generated by The Daily Mail, and corporal punishment never did them any harm except mentally, physically and emotionally.

Personally, I want judges that care about the law as written, not buffoons who legislate from the bench. I also prefer laws that don't impact civil liberties so Judges who care about the law can protect them. So you need two things here. Just laws that protect civil liberties and Judges that enforce the law.

Trump is appointing Judges who care about the law and won't invent rulings on laws that don't exist. I don't see how that's a bad or dangerous thing for anybody, unless you think the law is wrong. If

Yes, he was nominated. The fact that, after an outcry, his nomination was withdrawn does not mean that he "wasn't even nominated to be a judge?" Of course he was nominated to be judge.

Trump has a long list of successful nominations (where "successful" means that his nomination was appointed). Yes, I don't deny that. What I do claim is that they are largely idealogues, where loyalty to Trump is the most important criteria.

However, this guy is certainly NOT representative of Trump's nominees and the senate didn't just rubber stamp him, but returned the nomination to the Whitehouse where it was withdrawn. Not that his motivation was one of a political ideologue....

So you pick the one nomination that was rejected and paint all of Trump's nominations with the same brush? This is an error of logic and lame. What about the rest of his nominations confirmed by the Senate? Care to discuss those or

Laws say what they say. Judges that come up with, "well, I think it says something else" are the worst kind of human trash. Slavery is slavery. Ignorance is ignorance. Strength is strength. Anyone who tells you otherwise needs to be hanged.

In other countries, judges must have a law background and are usually experience, well respected lawyers who have practiced for many years. This is to give the judge a healthy respect for how the courts work both in theory and practice.

The purpose of the courts is not to blindly apply law; it is to provide justice. There is a difference.

If you just want someone to read from a book and apply its teachings, you want a preacher or a priest, not a judge. Justice is all about interpretation and discretion.

The judgement is based on the law, not on whether the judges care about civil liberties. In this case it's the EU law that's protecting civil liberties; without that law and the outcome would have been very different, however pro-civil-liberties any judges were. In other words, the EU cares more about civil liberties than does the UK.

You buffoons elected Trump. LOL

You buffoons voted for Brexit. The consequences of that are going to be much more nasty for you, immediate, and definitely attributable to your vote than the Trump presidenc

My favourite part of this law is that everyone's data is automatically gathered, except MPs and the PM of course. The PM can of course authorize such data to be gleaned, which is hilariously perfect for corruption, but nobody seems to have thought of that. "Looks like you didn't vote the way I wanted you to, Harry. Time for everyone to know about your internet search history." Idiots.

Well, whatever the issue is, it seems I'm all talk and no action. Not sure how much action people are expecting on the internet as opposed to talk, but whatever. At a guess it seems someone dislikes the comments posted under this account, has tried to do some google stalking, got frustrated at a lack of content, then went full tantrum. The joys of the internet.

With FISA, such data about US citizens is never abused in the US by a government trying to stay in power.

Geez, we'd never see a US political party collude with a foreign government to fabricate falsehoods against a candidate from another party, feed that disinformation to party loyalists embedded into law enforcement and intelligence agencies, then use that false data as a pretext for wiretapping that candidate as an "insurance policy" should that candidate win.

The problem with your conspiracy theory is that the "party loyalists embedded into law enforcement and intelligence agencies" had voting records that suggested otherwise.

While I agree that FISA is a problem and shouldn't be deemed constitutional, your tangental conspiracy theory is absurd. There's a huge difference between leaning on intelligence operatives in an allied country to uncover very real dirt on a political opponent and colluding with an enemy state to undermine democracy. It's disgusting the way

The problem with your conspiracy theory is that the "party loyalists embedded into law enforcement and intelligence agencies" had voting records that suggested otherwise.

...

What fucking "voting records" are you talking about?

Andy McCabe's wife didn't get almost $1 million from Hillary! cronies? While he was in charge of investigating her email server?

McCabe himself didn't get shitcanned from the FBI after the FBI director found something on him (what it is we don't know exactly yet, but informed guesses include FISA abuse and fraudulently modifying records of interviews...)

Peter Strzok didn't get fired from Meuller's team for bias after being part of the "investigation" into

However, because Britain is leaving the EU, it's unclear as to whether the British government will simply ignore the court ruling since EU laws will no longer have sway over Britain's national security policies.

This is why civil rights groups like Liberty and various MPs are concerned that ministers should not be able to substantially amend current EU laws in the process of transferring them to national law. That way, if the government wants to reduce protections for human rights or increase the state's power over its citizens, it will have to do it in the light of day, and accept the consequences if it turns out that some of those citizens don't agree and vote for someone else next time.

About pushing right wing Agendas. This includes the "Deep State" conspiracies being pushed right now. The issue is not so much Trump, its the US Congress, which is full of Neo-Fascists. This has been an on-going thing since the Gingrich Revolution of 1994. Basically, the way I see it, the US was on the path to being a purely secular, liberal democracy, and the right wing US Parties have used the idea of De-funding US Public institutions in an effort to try and restore the traditions, and racist ideas of the

The US Congress is full of fascists. Modded up to +4. What is wrong with people? This is just an emotional rant. Dictatorship, LOL. If we didn't have a democracy then Trump would have never been allowed anywhere near the Republican nomination, much less the actual presidency. Look at the Democrats, they had a challenge from an outsider too, and they dealt with it the correct way - rigging the vote. Anti-democracy, but it worked and the right candidate won.

A "Blue Wave" could easily turn the House over to Democrats. With more difficulty, it could give the Ds a majority in the Senate (the class of Senators up for re-election is already heavily Democratic). With a Democrat majority in the House, Trump could be impeached. However, if every single Senate seat goes D in 2018, there won't be enough non-Republican Senators to convict, and so it would be an ineffectual political gesture.

To quote (allegedly) Andrew Jackson: Andrew Jackson, [wikipedia.org] "Mr Marshall has made his decision; Now let him enforce it!"

It doesn't matter what a court rules if the executive charged with enforcing the ruling doesn't feel obliged to do so. And in this case, does anyone believe for a second that GCHQ and friends will be deterred for a minute by a court finding "Hey, this doesn't adequately protect individual rights"? They've known this will ignore individual rights from the get go. It's the whole point of the ac

EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT!!!Yes, sleazy publishers have always screamed their headlines to sell newspapers. For some reason, remnants of this marketing practice continue in the internet age. It's a delicate balance; trying to appeal to the unwashed masses who have some reading ability without offending the educated reader with crass commercialism. In which group are Slashdot readers?

As long as there is no accountability the judge can say that gravity is illigal, as long as nothing changes and/or heads roll, it is meaningless. Most likely this just means "We change the law till ot is legal." And that is the best outcome I expect. Most likely nothing will happen.

If you do nothing after your kid stole a cookie, besides telling it not to, he will do it again. Still no consequences? Why worry ? Take some more.

The "Deep state" is such a crock on conspiracy shit; it's borderline hilarious. If there is was a "deep state", then you can guarantee people who have been in government for years are a part of it. McConnel, Gingrich, etc. Even pundits like Limbaugh would be tits deep.

LOL.. I'm guessing that the Nunes memo is about to start a reckoning on the wrong side of the isle for these folks. Heads are already rolling at the FBI it seems, question is how deep will it reach and what it will expose. Seems it will be a lot to me. One is left to wonder how they will react. If past performance is any indicator it will be fun to watch so I have the popcorn ready.